I've been meaning to get this off my chest for awhile now, and this seems
to be as good a time as any.

For those who don't know, I stated that Ryoga's exaggerated directional sense
was a fanfic invention that somehow got shoved into the pool of 'canon'
knowledge, rather like passion spice and Kimiko "Mrs" Tendo. I received
several responses asking where I got such an idea.

Now, most of you are probably thinking "What the hell is up with this moron?
He doesn't think RYOGA has a bad sense of direction? Has Mercutio finally
snapped like a twig?"

Well, Ryoga does have a bad sense of direction. But my point is that it is not
as bad as it is almost always portrayed in fanficiton. There, what started out
as a joke has become the accepted norm.

Ryoga's sense of direction is not so severe that he ever wanders out of a
specific geographical area, that being Japan. He has never unintentionaly gone
farther than Okinawa in either the manga or the anime: his souvenirs that he's
always bringing for Akane are always distincly japanese. The only times he
ever left Japan was when he went to China to find Ranma, which he MEANT to do
so it doesn't count as bad direction sense, and that Moscow thing in the final
volume which I saw as fluke.

However, this directional impairment has been completely blown wayyyyyyyy out
of proportion in the fanfiction. Ryoga is constantly being portrayed as a
globe-traveling freak who travels to all seven continents and can cross
thousands of miles in a few seconds. He's also been shown as a getting lost
between dimensions, and walking to other planets. (Although I STILL laugh when
I think about that scene where he pummels a sandworm on Dune)

It all started innocently enough; people took Ryoga's directional ability and
magnified for the purposes of humor. "The More Things Change" is a fine
example of this, as are a number of earlier works I could name. Problem was,
it started becoming so common people began thinking it was the norm, and thus
had to resort to more outrageuos devices to make the whole 'lost boy' thing
seem funny, like the traveling to other plantets. Also, the moving thousands
of miles in a blink is unneccessary in his normal incarnation; Japan is small
enough to make hiking across it like he does and still coming back to Tokyo
every few months feasible.

Maybe I'm obsessing about his. But it really irks me whenever some incredibly
outrageous statement about how bad Ryoga gets thrown into a fic merely because
it's expected. He's not nearly that bad, people. 

Just my feelings on the subject. Thanks to everybody who read this far for
actually putting up with my ranting.

-Mercutio
"A plague 'a both your houses!"